Bang!
With a bang, Lin Sheng slapped open the copper lock hanging on the ebony box, reached out, and opened the box door, revealing its contents.
Appearing before his eyes was a pile of glittering gold ingots and various gold and silver jewelry.
Although quite messy, the weight was substantial.
"I didn't expect this group of bandits, though not very strong, to have accumulated quite a bit of wealth."
Lin Sheng's eyes lit up. He hefted the half-man-high wooden box, a smile appearing on his face.
This box definitely contained two to three thousand taels of silver.
As for the banknotes he had lost, he had already retrieved them from the bandits, and there were even a little more than what he had lost.
One blood enhancement pill was missing, but it wasn't important. It was only two or three hundred taels of silver, insignificant compared to the current gains.
Woof...
A clear dog bark sounded from the other side. Lin Sheng grabbed the ebony box and strode over.
Big Yellow's barking clearly indicated a discovery.
Indeed, just as he thought, Big Yellow was circling a pile of dried meat nearby. However, the dried meat was hanging high on the roof beam. It kept jumping but was still more than a meter away from the meat.
Lin Sheng leaped up and directly took down all the dried meat from the roof beam. Finally, he tore off two pieces of dried meat and generously threw them to the eagerly awaiting Big Yellow.
"It's time to leave."
By now, he had basically recovered everything he had lost and even earned an extra two to three thousand taels of silver, which put him in a great mood.
He gently kicked Big Yellow, who was burying its head in furious gnawing.
"Let's go. You can eat on the way back."
Having finished speaking, he had already turned and headed towards the outside of the camp.
Big Yellow, on the other hand, was wolfing down the meat. After swallowing one piece, it held another piece in its mouth and trotted out after Lin Sheng.
This bandit camp suffered heavy casualties. Ninety percent of the bandits died by his hand, and the rest, seeing things were going badly, had already fled. The camp was now empty, except for him, of course.
One person and one dog, both swift in their movements, quickly reached the edge of the camp.
Meanwhile, below the camp.
A subterranean space, illuminated only by dim yellow firelight, was filled with the stench of feces and urine, making one instinctively cover their nose.
On both sides of the space were cages made of wooden stakes as thick as bowls.
The cages were filled with people, each one sallow and gaunt, spiritless. Most were listless, huddled on the ground.
Rarely, there were a few whose clothes were relatively clean, but they were also sitting on the ground, bruised and swollen.
In the cage closer to the outside, Wang Dehai leaned against the mud wall, both his eyes swollen high, and one cheek significantly larger than the other.
"Pah!"
He opened his mouth and forcefully spat out a thick, bloody phlegm. However, the movement was too large, seeming to pull at his wounds, causing him to grimace in pain.
"I never thought that I, Wang Dehai, who calculated everything, would end up falling here, alas..."
After the pain subsided, he said with a sigh.
Looking at the messy environment in the prison cell and the lifeless, hollow-eyed people around him, a trace of despair inevitably welled up in his heart.
"What exactly did these bastards bring us here for?"
As he sighed, he was also thinking about this question in his heart.
When these bandits robbed them, they didn't immediately kill them but instead locked them all up here. Clearly, they had other intentions.
Although he didn't know what they wanted to do, it definitely wasn't anything good.
"I'm only in my 30s, I'm still young, I don't want to die..."
He muttered under his breath, his voice growing louder, his gaze sweeping over the other people in the same cage around him.
He tried to get his companions around him to resist with him.
However, the others in the cage didn't even spare him a glance, as if they hadn't heard him, still huddled together, unmoving.
"You fools, are you just going to wait here to die?"
Wang Dehai cursed these people while raising his eyes to look outside the cage.
There were no bandits inside the cage at the moment. In his opinion, if these people cooperated, there might be a chance to break open the wooden stakes and escape together.
Although escaping the wooden stakes didn't mean they could escape this bandit camp, it was at least better than waiting here to die.
But looking at these fish-like prisoners, he cursed them, hating that they weren't living up to his expectations. He immediately got up, mobilized the Qi and blood within his body, raised his hand, and fiercely smashed it towards what he thought was the thinnest wooden stake in front of him.
"Bull Rushing Horn."
Only a muffled bang was heard, followed by a heart-wrenching scream.
"Ouch!!"
Wang Dehai's fat body fell backward onto the ground. He covered his right hand and kept rolling, letting out a pig-like wail.
He clearly felt that his right hand was definitely broken.
He glanced at the wooden stake. The outer layer of wood on the stake was shattered, revealing the dark iron pillar inside.
"Holy crap!!"
Seeing this scene, he couldn't help but curse, but soon he continued to wail miserably.
Now he understood why the people inside looked half-dead and didn't react at all to his suggestion. Clearly, they had already suffered losses from this before.
Thinking of this, he couldn't help but want to curse again.
However, the despair in his heart grew stronger. He covered his right hand, grimacing, and glanced at the several corpses piled up in the shadowy corner of the cage. His gaze gradually became dim.
Those corpses had clearly accepted their fate and didn't want to suffer here, so they chose to end their own lives.
And at this moment, he had also accepted his fate. Instead of eating leftover slop-like food here every day and getting beaten up from time to time, it would truly be more straightforward to choose to end his own life.
Thinking of this, he seemed to have made some kind of decision, and his eyes gradually became somewhat desolate.
He shakily got up and untied his belt from his waist. Looking at the wooden stakes above the cage, he hardened his heart, threw the belt over them, and tremblingly tied it into a knot.
After forcefully tugging the knot to ensure it was strong enough to bear his weight, he let out a heavy sigh.
Using his dirty and messy sleeve, he wiped away the moisture from the corners of his eyes. Immediately after, he hardened his heart, leaped up, and hung onto the knot.
The intense pressure on his neck made his eyes widen and his mouth open wide. His two short legs kicked back and forth continuously.
As for the others around him, they merely glanced at this scene with their lifeless eyes and then withdrew their gaze, accustomed to such sights.
"Uh... uh... uh..."
Wang Dehai continuously let out low whimpering sounds from his mouth. His two palms instinctively clutched the knot, trying to alleviate some pain, but for his fat and heavy body, it had no effect whatsoever.
Soon, his eyes became blurry, and he only felt his consciousness slowly drifting away.
In a daze, he seemed to hear a muffled sound, but at this moment, he no longer had the strength to pay attention to it.
And in the next instant, he suddenly felt the pressure on his neck instantly loosen, and his consciousness, which was originally drifting away, immediately gathered back.
Cough, cough, cough...
He coughed violently, his eyeballs rolling back. The entire person seemed as if he hadn't come back to life yet.
But as two clear slapping sounds rang out, Wang Dehai only felt a stinging pain on his face, and his consciousness gradually recovered.
Ignoring his already swollen face, his scattered gaze focused. He saw a somewhat familiar face frowning and looking at him.
"What's going on? This fatty still hasn't come to. Could he have actually hanged himself to death?"
Lin Sheng frowned as he looked at the disheveled fatty, wondering if he should give him two more slaps.
Just now, he was about to leave the camp with Big Yellow when he suddenly heard some faint sounds coming from underground. He quickly realized that there might be a hidden space beneath this camp. After a brief thought, he decided to go down and take a look. After a simple search, he quickly found the entrance to this underground space in a camp tent.
Opening the door to the underground space, he saw Wang Dehai hanging himself as soon as he entered.
At this moment, Wang Dehai's appearance was vastly different from before, but he quickly recognized the person. Although he didn't know why the other party was here, seeing him hanging himself to seek death, he immediately kicked open the prison door and entered to save him.
However, looking at Wang Dehai's appearance at this moment, it seemed he had come in a little late.
Just as he raised his hand again, preparing to hit harder, Wang Dehai suddenly gasped for air and sat up.
His face was flushed, and he was panting heavily. He was first startled when he saw the person in front of him, but he quickly recognized him.
"You... you are Brother Lin!!"
As if somewhat uncertain, he rubbed his eyes hard.
"That's right, it's me."
Lin Sheng grinned and said.
"Where are the bandits outside? Why are you here!? Could it be that you were also captured..."
But when he saw the large hole where the cage door was broken, he realized something, and his voice stopped abruptly.
"I've already dealt with the bandits outside."
Lin Sheng said with a smile.
Wang Dehai's eyes widened in astonishment. After a while, he burst into laughter, his face showing wild joy.
"I knew it... I knew that I, Fatty Wang, am a fated person, blessed by fortune, and wouldn't just die in this godforsaken place."
"Alright, tell me, what happened? You weren't in Lin'an County, so how did you end up here?"
Lin Sheng patted Wang Dehai and asked.
Knowing that he wasn't going to die, Wang Dehai's face lit up, and he immediately recounted the entire incident.
After listening, Lin Sheng also felt a bit emotional in his heart.
"Is Zhenshan Tower really gone?"
In his previous conversation with Huang Quan, he had already understood that Zhenshan Tower definitely belonged to one of the forces being purged, and that so-called Chen Family probably wouldn't escape either.
However, according to what Fatty Wang said, the current situation in Lin'an County is very chaotic. But thinking about it carefully, it makes sense. After all, the forces in the County Town have been completely reshuffled, and it's time to re-establish the hierarchy, so chaos is normal.
"Brother Lin, I didn't expect you to still be alive. When I heard about what happened in Yangping Town, I thought you had met with misfortune. I knew that with Brother Lin's appearance, you were definitely not someone with shallow blessings."
Wang Dehai was also a bit emotional at this moment. Back then, he really thought Lin Sheng was dead.
After all, the situation in Yangping Town was far more severe than a near-death experience.
"Brother Lin, what are you going to do with these people?"
Remembering that there were quite a few people held in this underground prison, he asked Lin Sheng again.
"These people were all captured. Since the bandits have been eliminated, let's release them all."
When he first entered this underground space and saw this dense crowd of people, he was also a bit surprised in his heart.
After all, a rough estimate of the people in these prison cells was probably two to three hundred.
One must know that the number of bandits who died by his hand was only about 100.
So many people were actually hidden underground, and this underground space was also a considerable engineering feat.
While thinking, he had already arrived outside the cages and shattered the prison doors with lightning-fast strikes.
And the listless people in the prison cells, at this moment, seemed to have regained their vitality and frantically rushed out of the cages.
Lin Sheng, on the other hand, left quickly, taking Wang Dehai with him, followed by Big Yellow. The two people and one dog departed swiftly.
Clip-clop, clip-clop...
On the horse carriage, the two people and one dog were all on it, and an ebony box was placed at the back.
This horse carriage was naturally taken from the bandit camp. It was just right for carrying the ebony box behind it and Wang Dehai.
At this moment, Wang Dehai was stuffing some flatbread and food into his mouth in a chaotic manner, eating like a hungry ghost reincarnated.
Only after consecutively swallowing more than ten flatbreads and chugging down a gourd of water did Wang Dehai wipe his mouth, a look of enjoyment appearing on his face.
"It's been so long since I've had such delicious flatbread... *burp*..."
"These damn bandits, I don't know what kind of madness they had, capturing so many people."
After eating and drinking his fill, Wang Dehai said with a burp.
"Speaking of which, Brother Lin, I was also shocked that you could eliminate that group of bandits. I didn't expect that in such a short time, Brother Lin, your strength has reached this level."
Fatty Wang seemed to have suddenly remembered something and looked at Lin Sheng with some surprise.
Only now did he realize that from beginning to end, it seemed there was only Lin Sheng alone. No, there was also a dog.
And he had eliminated the entire bandit camp.
One must know that the guard captain of the caravan he was with back then, who was in the Forging Tendons Realm, was directly and severely injured by a master among these bandits with a single blow.
So there were definitely masters among this group of bandits, but even so, they were still eliminated like this.
"It's just luck. However, this group of bandits went to such great lengths to capture and imprison people alive. They clearly had some purpose."
Lin Sheng shook his head slightly and said.
The more he thought about this matter, the more wrong it felt. One must know that feeding two to three hundred people daily was no small amount, and Wang Dehai also said that the person imprisoned here for the longest time had been there for almost a month.
Imprisoning people for such a long time clearly had some purpose, and requiring so many people probably meant the matter wasn't simple. There was definitely a force supporting them from behind.
He thought of what the bandit leader said when he killed him back then.
"The officials?"
Lin Sheng drove the horse carriage, frowning slightly.
Before this, he wouldn't have thought about this, but after his conversation with Huang Quan, he had understood that human lives were often worthless.
Or rather, they could be considered a type of consumable resource.
"Forget it. These bandits were basically all killed. No matter what force was behind them, they won't find me."